The current COVID-19 pandemic has hugely affected production across both film and TV with delays in filming and cast or crew contracting coronavirus but Star Trek producer Alex Kurtzman has shared some numbers that show how much the cost has risen for many TV productions.
Talking on TV’s Top 5 podcast, Kurtzman told hosts Lesley Goldberg and Dan Fienberg that precautionary measures, such as PPE, added an extra $300,000-$500,000 to the budget of each TV episode of currently running Star Trek series. Added up over an entire season, the huge rise in costs could spell doom for the short term future of high end TV shows.
The last 20 years have become known as TV’s golden period with many shows combining high production values with high cultural impact such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Wire and Mad Men. The introduction of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ has seen the number of high end productions rise sharply with original shows like Orange is the New Black and The Mandalorian.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has hit production hard and Netflix has cancelled several shows which were due to return like I am Not Okay With This and GLOW owing to the rise in costs. Several showrunners confirmed Kurtzman’s figures to Rolling Stone but added that those numbers were at the lower end of the ballpark. With one showrunner suggesting that testing cast and crew alone adds another $100,000 to each episode’s budget plus extra fees owing to longer shooting times. Add to that the cost of quarantining guest actors flown in and budgets rise even higher.
The death of high end TV shows has been predicted before and been proven wrong each time since but the unpredictability of COVID-19 could have longer lasting repercussions for the industry than previously thought.
Source: Rolling Stone
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